WO2009056534A1

WO2009056534A1 - Method of managing the utilization time for a content

Info

Publication number: WO2009056534A1
Application number: PCT/EP2008/064579
Authority: WO
Inventors: Haythem Gadacha; Pierrick Crepy; Fabien Venries
Original assignee: Viaccess
Priority date: 2007-10-30
Filing date: 2008-10-28
Publication date: 2009-05-07
Also published as: EP2206066A1; FR2923123B1; TW200937247A; FR2923123A1; IL205366A0

Abstract

The invention relates to a method of managing the time for the utilization by a user of a digital content protected by a right of access having a predefined validity period. According to this method, at a given instant t, the user temporally shifts said validity period within limits predefined by the operator if the utilization of the content has not yet commenced at said instant t, and if the utilization of said content has already commenced at said instant t, the user temporally shifts that part of said validity period that has not yet elapsed within the limits predefined by the operator.

Description

METHOD FOR MANAGING THE TIME OF OPERATING A CONTENT

DESCRIPTION

TECHNICAL AREA

The invention lies in the field of access control and more specifically relates to a method for managing the operating time in a user's terminal of a digital content provided by an operator, said content being protected by a right. access with a period of validity predefined by the operator.

The invention also relates to a computer program stored on a medium and intended for the management of the operating time by a user of said content.

The invention also relates to a terminal for receiving said content.

STATE OF THE PRIOR ART

Content protection techniques such as DRM (for Digital Right Management) or CAS (for Conditional Access Systems) allow operators to grant their customers a right to access content for a limited period of time, which may be limited by a date of beginning of validity of the right from which the user is authorized to start the exploitation of the content, and by a date of end of validity of said right beyond which the exploitation of the content is no longer possible. The period of validity of the duty may also consist of a sliding time interval, that is to say of pre-determined duration but whose start date is a priori indeterminate and will be fixed as that of the first effective use of the time. content by the user.

In any case, no exploitation of the content by the user is possible after the expiry date. A disadvantage of the prior art stems from the fact that the user loses the right to exploit a content if he is not able to do so before the expiry of his period of validity.

This situation may lead potential users to hesitate or even to forego the purchase or subscription to a service.

Furthermore, it is common for the exploitation of content protected by a right of access is authorized only for a particular terminal so as to avoid a fraudulent sharing of said content with users not authorized to use it. In this case a roaming user with a right to access content will not be able to temporarily transfer this right to a mobile terminal, for example.

The purpose of the invention is to allow an end user of a content to choose the moment to exploit the content for which he has acquired a right of access taking into account, on the one hand, his own personal constraints and / or professional and, on the other hand, possible failures of the network and / or the terminal in which the content is exploited.

DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION The object of the invention is achieved by means of a method for managing the operating time by a user of digital content provided by an operator, said content being protected by a right of access having a period of validity predefined by the operator.

According to the invention, at a given instant t, the user temporally shifts said period of validity within limits predefined by the operator if the exploitation of the content has not yet started at said instant t, and if the exploitation of said content has already begun at said instant t, the user temporally shifts the portion not yet expired of said validity period within the limits predefined by the operator. In a first implementation variant of the method, when the period of validity of the right is delimited by a start date T1 and an end date T2, the management of the exploitation time of the content consists of advancing or delaying the date T1 and the date T2 of the same time offset.

Alternatively, the management of the content exploitation time may consist of temporarily suspending the exploitation of said content for an indefinite period. In a second variant of implementation of the method, when the period of validity of the right is delimited only by a validity start date T1, the management of the exploitation time of the content consists in shifting said validity start date Tl within the limits predefined by the operator, and when the period of validity of the right is delimited only by a validity end date T2, the management of the content exploitation time consists of shifting said validity end date T2 within the limits predefined by the operator. In a particular embodiment of the invention, the limits predefined by the operator comprise:

- an indicator of authorization or prohibition of the application of each of the operations of advancement, delay and suspension, to the right considered.

According to an additional characteristic of the method, the limits predefined by the operator comprise a maximum number of applications of each of the operations of advancement, delay and suspension, to the right considered.

According to another additional characteristic of the method, the limits predefined by the operator comprise authorized maximum permissible advance or delay times, that is to say the maximum amplitudes authorized for an advance or a delay of the right considered.

According to another additional characteristic of the method, the limits predefined by the operator comprise maximum cumulative periods of advancement or delay allowed, that is to say the maximum accumulated magnitudes allowed for all advancements or delays in the right in question.

According to an additional characteristic of the method, the operator sets the period during which the user can require the management of the exploitation time of the content.

Thus, a request to offset or suspend the period of validity of the right will be taken into account only if it is received by the terminal during the period fixed by the operator.

According to another characteristic of the method, the limits predefined by the operator include a date of expiry of the right of access and a lower limit date before which the exploitation of the content protected by said right is not authorized, which are not predefined in the process.

According to one characteristic of the invention, the management of the content exploitation time is carried out locally in a terminal of the user.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

Other features and advantages of the invention will emerge from the description which follows, taken by way of non-limiting example, with reference to the appended figure schematically illustrating the main steps of the method according to the invention. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PARTICULAR EMBODIMENTS

The invention will be described, as an exemplary embodiment, in the context of an application in which a telecommunication operator provides services and content scrambled to users each provided with a receiving terminal equipped with a processor. security. The contents may be audiovisual programs or data protected by a Conditional Access Control (CAS) access control system or a Digital Right Management (DRM) license.

The protected contents are accessible and usable by a user according to several possible services: - TV Live service: content is broadcast in real time to a large number of subscribers, via a broadcast network (satellite, cable, terrestrial hertzian, IP broadcast mode / multicast ...). - VOD service: a content is sent to a particular subscriber, at his own request, via a distribution network allowing the individual addressing of the subscriber (typically IP network in unicast mode).

- PVR service: a content (broadcast or VOD) is recorded by the subscriber on its receiving terminal or by an ad hoc function proposed by the network operator; the subscriber can later access this content by replaying the record. Recall that in the context of DRM, and more specifically, in the context of the OMA standard DRM v2, the temporal management of the conditions and access rights is limited to the control of the temporal criteria of validity of the access rights. Such criteria can be given as a duration, by means of an <accumulated> constraint specifying the cumulative duration of effective consumption of the content protected by the DRM license, or <interval> specifying the duration of the rolling period validity of a right, or in the form of a time interval, by means of a constraint of type <datetime> specifying a time interval defined by at least a start date or an end date.

It should be noted that a rolling period of validity of a license is a period beginning on the date of the first exploitation by the user of the content and ending no later than the expiry date of the license. This one is valid on a time interval of given duration but of date of beginning a priori indeterminate. In order to allow the application of the method to the right defined by the DRM license, the operator associates with this right, the following information:

- the period of validity of the DRM license, determined by a start date T1 and end date T2,

parameters a_OK, r_0K and s_OK whose values indicate respectively whether the advance, the delay or the suspension of said period of validity are authorized or not, the parameters nb_Max_A, nb_Max_R and nb Max S, indicating respectively the maximum number of authorized advancements, the maximum number of authorized delays and the maximum number of authorized suspensions, of the parameters a_Max_U and r_Max_ϋ, indicating respectively the unit amplitudes of the advancements and the authorized delays, of the parameters a_Max_C and r_Max_C, indicating respectively the accumulated amplitudes of the advancements and authorized delays. Note that, depending on the type of operation selected by the user (offset or suspension), authorized by the method, the values nb_Max_A, nb_Max_R, nb_Max_S, a_Max_C and r_Max_C decrease depending on the selected operation. In addition, the operator associates with the DRM license an expiry date TP and / or a lower limit date of validity TO.

In operation, a DRM agent installed on the user's terminal manages a communication interface with the user allowing the latter to provide the type of operation (shift or suspension) that he wishes to apply to the access right of which he holds.

This communication interface may consist of a message that is displayed on a window of the screen of the user's terminal still audio message broadcast via the terminal.

Figure 1 schematically illustrates the main steps of the method according to the invention. In step 2, the user provides the DRM agent with a description of the desired processing via the interface of communication. On receipt of this description, in step 4, the DRM agent checks whether the right considered is still valid and is temporally constrained, that is to say if its validity is limited in time. If the considered right is obsolete or not temporally constrained, in step 6, the DRM agent transmits an error message to the user via the communication interface.

If the right considered is not obsolete and is temporally constrained, in step 8, the DRM agent presents to the user the authorized processing on the right considered via the communication interface.

In a first implementation variant of the method, when the period of validity of the right is delimited by a start date T1 and an end date T2, the authorized treatments on the right considered are to advance the date T1 and the date T2 of the same time shift (step 10), to delay said T1 and T2 of the same time shift (step 12), or to temporarily suspend the exploitation of said content for an indefinite period (step 14).

If the user selects the progress of the validity period (step 10), in step 16, the DRM agent verifies that the parameter a_OK is "true" and that the parameter nb_Max_A is greater than or equal to one.

If these conditions are not satisfied, in step 17, the DRM agent transmits to the user an error message via the communication interface. If the conditions are verified, in step 18, the user transmits to the DRM agent the amplitude of the desired advancement.

In step 20, the DRM agent compares the amplitude entered with the parameters predefined by the operator a_Max_U, and a_Max_C respectively indicating the unit amplitude and the cumulative amplitude of the advancements.

Specifically, the DRM agent checks whether: • amplitude <a_Max_U, (Cl)

• amplitude <a_Max_C, (C2)

• max (current_date, TO) <Tl - amplitude, (C3)

If at least one condition (C1) or (C2) is not satisfied, in step 21, the DRM agent transmits to the user an error message via the communication interface.

If the user chooses a new start date of the validity period of the license, the DRM agent carries out the above checks by replacing the amplitude data by the data date_choisie - Tl | .

If the condition (C3) is not satisfied, the DRM agent invites the user to accept a truncation of the remaining validity period of the right, or a decrease in the amplitude of its offset.

In step 22, the agent updates the data describing the period of validity of the entitlement in the license as follows:

Tl = T1 - amplitude T2 = T2 - amplitude nb Max A = nb Max A - I a_Max_C: = a_Max_C - amplitude

If the user selects the delay of the validity period (step 12), in step 23, the DRM agent verifies that the parameter r OK is "true" and that the parameter nb_Max_R is greater than or equal to one.

If these conditions are not verified, in step 24, the DRM agent transmits to the user an error message via the communication interface. If said conditions are satisfied, in step 26, the user transmits to the DRM agent the amplitude of the desired delay, and in step 28, the DRM agent compares the amplitude entered with the parameters r Max U, and r Max C predefined by the operator indicating respectively the unit amplitude and the cumulative amplitude of the delays.

Specifically, the DRM agent checks whether:

• amplitude <r_Max_U, (C4)

• amplitude <r_Max_C, (C5) • T2 + amplitude <TP, (C6)

If at least one of the conditions (C4) or (C5) is not verified, in step 29, the DRM agent transmits to the user an error message via the communication interface. If the user chooses a new end date of the validity period of the license, the agent

DRM performs the above checks by replacing the amplitude data with the data | date_choisie - T2 | .

If the condition (C6) is not satisfied, the DRM agent prompts the user to accept a truncation of the remaining validity period of the right or a decrease in the amplitude of its offset.

In step 30, the agent updates the data describing the period of validity of the right in the license as follows:

Tl = Tl + amplitude

T2 = T2 + amplitude nb_Max_R = nb_Max_R - 1 r_Max_C = r_Max_C - amplitude If the user selects the suspension of the validity period (step 14), the agent DRM verifies (step 32) that the parameter s_OK is "true" and that the parameter nb_Max_S is greater than or equal to 1.

If the desired treatment by the user is not allowed, or if the user has already applied this processing a number of times equal to the maximum allowed number, in step 34, the DRM agent transmits to the user a message that the desired treatment is not or is no longer allowed. If the suspension is allowed, at the stage

36, the DRM agent updates the data describing the period of validity of the right in the license as follows: duration_Recovery_validity = T2 - max (Tl, date_Current)

Tl = null

T2 = null nb_Max_S = nb_Max_S - 1

In another variant of implementation of the method, when the period of validity of the right is delimited only by a date of commencement of validity T1, the management of the content exploitation time consists of shifting said validity start date Tl within the limits predefined by the operator, and when the period of validity of the right is delimited only by a validity end date T2, the management of the content exploitation time consists of shifting said validity end date T2 within the limits predefined by the operator.

Note that, whatever the treatment chosen by the user, the other constraints of the license or access title such as, for example, a remaining number of authorized content exploitation sessions, a cumulative duration of actual consumption of the content, are kept with their latest current values.

Claims

1. A method of managing the time of exploitation by a user of a digital content provided by an operator, said content being protected by a right of access having a period of validity predefined by the operator, characterized by the following steps : associating with said access right at least one of the parameters a_0K, r_0K and s_0K, the respective values of said parameters indicating whether the advance, the delay or the suspension of said period of validity is authorized or not, and, temporally offset locally in a terminal of the user said period of validity within limits predefined by the operator if the exploitation of the content has not yet started at said instant t and if the values of the parameters a_OK, r_0K and s_0K allow such temporal offset, or - temporally offset, locally in a terminal of the user, the portion not yet expired of said validity period within the predefined limits by the operator if the exploitation of said content has already started at said instant t and if the values of the associated parameters a_OK, r_0K and s_OK allow such a time offset,

2. The method as claimed in claim 1, in which said access right is also associated with at least one of the parameters nb_Max_A, nb_Max_R and nb_Max_S respectively indicating the maximum number. authorized advancements, the maximum number of authorized delays and the maximum number of authorized suspensions.

3. The method as claimed in claim 2, in which said access right is also associated with at least one of the parameters a_Max_U and r_Max_U respectively indicating the unit amplitudes of the advancements and authorized delays and the parameters a_Max_C and r Max C, respectively indicating cumulative magnitudes of allowed advancements and delays.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein the predefined limits by the operator further comprise cumulative maximum amplitudes allowed for all advancements or delays of the right considered.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the management of the operating time of said digital content is performed by software installed on the terminal of the user providing a communication interface with the user to enable the latter to provide the type. operations it wishes to apply to the right of access which it holds.

The method according to claim 1, wherein the validity period of the right is delimited by a start date T1 and an end date T2, and wherein the management of the content exploitation time is to advance or delay the date Tl and the date T2 of the same time shift or to temporarily suspend the exploitation of said content of an indefinite duration.

7. Method according to claim 1, wherein the period of validity of the right is delimited only by a validity start date Tl and in that the management of the time of exploitation of the content consists of shifting said validity start date Tl. within the limits predefined by the operator.

8. The method according to claim 1, wherein the period of validity of the right is delimited only by a validity end date T2 and in that the management of the time of exploitation of the content consists in shifting said end date of validity T2. within the limits predefined by the operator.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein the limits predefined by the operator include an indicator of authorization or prohibition of the application to the right considered of each of the operations of advancement, delay and suspension, and a maximum number applications to the right considered for each of the advancement, delay and suspension operations.

The method of claim 1, wherein the predefined limits by the operator further include maximum allowable magnitudes. for advancement or delay of the right in question.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein the limits predefined by the operator further include an expiry date of the access right or a lower deadline before which exploitation of the content protected by said right is not allowed. .

The method of claim 1, wherein said content is protected by a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system or a Conditional Access Systems (CAS) system.

13. The method of claim 1 to 12, wherein said content is a broadcast audiovisual program, an audiovisual program on demand, or an audiovisual program replayed after having been previously recorded.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein the operator sets the period during which the user may require the management of the operating time in his terminal of the content provided by the operator.

15. A computer program stored on a medium and intended, when executed, for the management of the operating time by a user of digital content provided by an operator, said content being protected by a right of access having a period of validity predefined by the operator, characterized in that it comprises: a module for associating with said access right at least one of the parameters a_0K, r_0K and s_0K whose values indicate respectively whether the advance, the delay or the suspension of the said period of validity are authorized or not, and

a module for locally shifting in a terminal of the user, said period of validity within predetermined time limits by the operator if the exploitation of the content has not yet started at said instant t and if the values of the parameters a_OK, r_0K and s_0K allow such a time shift, or to shift locally in the user's terminal the unexpired portion of said validity period within the time limits predefined by the operator if the exploitation of said content has already started at the instant t and if the values of the parameters a_OK, r_0K and s_OK allow such a time shift.

16. Terminal for receiving digital content provided by an operator to a user, said content being protected by an access right having a period of validity predefined by the operator, characterized in that it comprises: means for associating with said access right at least one of the parameters a_OK, r_0K and s_OK whose values respectively indicate whether the advancement, delay or suspension of the said period of validity are authorized or not, and

means for locally shifting in a user's terminal, said period of validity within time limits predefined by the operator if the exploitation of the content has not yet started at said instant t and if the values of the parameters a_OK, r_0K and s_0K allow such a time shift, or to shift locally in the user's terminal the unexpired portion of said validity period within the time limits predefined by the operator if the exploitation of said content has already started at the instant t and if the values of the parameters a_OK, r_0K and s_OK allow such a time shift.

17. Terminal according to claim 16 further comprising software providing a communication interface with the user to enable the user to provide the type of operations he wishes to apply to the right of access which he holds.